The Hindu : New Delhi News : MCD's new motto for New Year

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Dec 31, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

MCD's new motto for New Year

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, DEC. 30. Admitting that it had failed to achieve its last year's resolution promising "My Clean Delhi", the Municipal Corporation of Delhi today announced a new motto for the year 2005: "My Progressive Delhi".

At his annual press conference here, the Municipal Commissioner, Rakesh Mehta, conceded that he was "feeling depressed" as the ambitious garbage segregation scheme of the civic body had lost steam. Nevertheless, he declared: "We want to move ahead with a fresh slogan in the New Year."

Explaining the significance of the new motto, Mr. Mehta said: "Progressiveness would not be confined only to the vital areas of civic services, but would also cover a wide gamut of internal processes aimed at bringing in greater automation, computerisation, citizen-friendly measures and outsourcing."

The progressive reforms initiated in many areas of functioning would be decisive in making the civic body not only a citizen-centric institution but also a modernised civic organisation in tune with technological advancements and holistic vision for a progressive city, he observed.

People-friendly building by-laws, strengthening of its e-governance programme, public-private partnership in primary health care and primary education, are a few priority area identified by the MCD for the New Year.

The New Year would also see the formation of the Division of Environment, setting up of a Tourism Cell, besides witnessing a `advertising blitz' since the Urban Graphics Forum has taken several key decision which are ready to be implemented.

Referring to the new building byelaws, he claimed this would prove to be a major structural reform next to Unit Area System. Observing that e-governance programmes of the MCD had now matured, he said various other things like networking, setting-up of a data centre, integrated citizen service bureaus and grievance monitoring would be completed soon. He disclosed that MCD is appointing an Advisor (Information Technology) from January 1, for effective implementation of e-governance programmes.

Commenting on the public private partnership in solid waste management, he said the process would be initiated for implementing it in remaining four zones: Civil Lines, Rohini, Shahdara (North) and Shahdara (South). "We will contract two new sanitary landfill sites for which environment impact assessment is in progress at Narela and Bhatti," he said.

Going a step ahead in e-governance, Mr. Mehta said the civic body was planning to purchase about 4,000 computers. "We are developing a policy in which we would not be spending much and the same time the computers would be updated at regular intervals," he claimed.

Besides a new vendor policy aimed at providing security of work to vendors in the city, setting up Tourism Cell to interact with institutions dealing with tourism and development of modern parking systems in Mehrauli, Chandni Chowk, Ramlila Maidan and Kamla Nagar, Mr. Mehta termed quality testing as an important area of reforms in the coming year. This is expected to improve the quality of work in MCD and enhance public confidence, he hoped.

Commenting on 2004, Mr. Mehta termed implementation of the Unit Area System as an achievement of the civic body. Observing there had been strong public support to check unauthorised constructions particularly commercialisation of the residential areas, he said the Corporation this year had carried out demolitions in all areas of the Capital. Providing cooked mid-day meal to 9.5-lakh students daily and computer education in 500 schools were the other success stories of the year, he said.

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